"Alright lads, get stripped off and I'll have you on for Kanu and Jame-o in three." Photograph: Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images

"Is there any truth in the story that Harry Redknapp once fielded a spectator during a West Ham game?" asks Terry Williams. "Legend has it that the Hammers were having a shocker and a fan was heckling them. Harry is then supposed to have turned round and said: 'If you think you can do any better, then prove it!'"

Incredibly, the legend is true, Terry. In 1994, Redknapp was assistant manager of West Ham and his side were playing Oxford City in a pre-season friendly when ... well, we'll let 'Arry take up the tale:

"Lee Chapman was playing for us at the time," recounts Redknapp. "All through the first half some tattooed skinhead behind me was giving Lee terrible stick. At half-time I turned to this bloke who had West Ham etched on his neck and asked 'Can you play as good as you talk?' He looked totally confused. So I told him he was going to get his dream to play for West Ham. We sent him down the tunnel and he reappeared 10 minutes later all done out in the strip. He ran on to the pitch and a journalist from the local Oxford paper sidled up and asked 'Who's that Harry?' I said 'What? Haven't you been watching the World Cup? That's the great Bulgarian Tittyshev!' The fella wasn't bad - actually, he scored!"

The fella in question was a 27-year-old called Steve Davies who had given up park football six years earlier. The West Ham board were obviously impressed with Harry's idiosyncratic decision-making: they made him manager a month later.

HAVE JOCKSTRAP, WILL TRAVEL

"What is the longest distance a footballer has been known to travel on a daily basis to attend training at their club?" asks Dan Brady.

Sometimes, as you watch Rio Ferdinand pick up £120,000 a week for occasionally engaging second gear, it's easy to forget that playing football is a job, and that its protagonists are subject to the same daily irritants as the great unwashed: working with a hangover, eejit colleagues who nick your favourite mug - and commuting to work.

We had a few nominations for the longest daily to trip to training, including Winston Bogarde (Amsterdam-Chelsea: 356km) and VfL Wolfsburg's Pablo Thiam (Berlin-Wolfsburg: 150km), but nobody gets near the monster commute, albeit not a daily one, undertaken by the Australian striker Damian Mori.

"Mori, currently playing in the A-League for the Central Coast Mariners, still lives in Adelaide," says Andrew Stockings. "Last year he was playing for Perth Glory, when he also commuted between matches from Adelaide. The journey from Adelaide to the Central Coast is approximately 1,500km; Adelaide to Perth is 2,700km."

"What do the three stars on Bayern Munich logo represent?" wonders Indro Cahyono. "They've won four European Cups (1974, 1975, 1976, 2001), so why don't they have four stars?"

Unlike international football, where stars are awarded for World Cup wins, stars on club logos are a very arbitrary affair, and the rules as to what a team can use vary greatly from country to country. Bayern's gold stars actually have nothing to do with their European achievements, and are instead a reward granted to the club by the German Football Association (DFB) for domestic success. The DFB's standardised system was introduced to the Bundesliga in 2004, granting one star to teams with three or more league title, two stars to teams with five or more titles and three stars to teams with 10 or more titles.

Somewhat controversially, only titles from the Bundesliga, formed in 1963, were counted, meaning that only Bayern Munich (then with 18 titles, now with 20) earned all three stars. Borussia Mönchengladbach (five titles) are the only team with two stars, while Werder Bremen (four titles), Hamburger SV (three titles) and Dortmund (three titles) each have one, and a host of teams such as Nurnberg (nine titles, but only one in the Bundesliga) and Schalke 04 (seven titles, none in Bundesliga) are left with none.

In other countries the rules are very different, with Italian clubs granted one star for every 10 league wins, while one star for every MLS Cup win is now the standard reward in the United States. In England, Liverpool choose to wear five stars to represent their Champions League wins, but there is no standard system or rules as to what can and can't be worn. The official Uefa reward for five European Cup wins, meanwhile, is a special badge of honour for the club's shirts, as well as the right to keep the trophy itself.

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE

"What formation did Terry Venables play during Euro 96," asked Kim Ulrich back in the day, a question that has new relevance given all the guff about England's formation and the erroneous assumption that Venables' side played a space-age 3-5-2 throughout the famous tournament in which they actually won only two games.

"If memory serves me correctly England began Euro '96 with a 4-4-2 (or maybe 4-4-1-1) formation with a starting line-up of: Seaman; G Neville, Southgate, Adams, Pearce; Anderton, Ince, Gascoigne, McManaman; Sheringham, Shearer," said James Lowther. "But for the match against Scotland they changed formation to 3-5-2, with Southgate starting in midfield. Then, at half-time, Southgate dropped back to replace Pearce in defence and Redknapp came on as the extra midfielder. For the games against Holland and Spain they reverted to 4-4-2, with Platt taking Ince's place against Spain.

"In the semi-final England switched again to 3-5-2, with Ince returning to the side and Neville dropping out through suspension. Throughout the tournament McManaman and Anderton swapped wings fairly freely. The 4-3-2-1 'Christmas tree' formation was never adopted during the tournament."

"A number of Channel Islanders have played in the top English division over the years (Matthew Le Tissier, Chris Jones, Graeme Le Saux)," writes David Glass, "but have there been any well-known players from the other offshore islands - the Isle of Man, the Hebrides, Isle of Wight, Orkney, Shetland, etc?"

"According to Wikipedia, Clive Allen's been on the books of seven London clubs, playing for six of them. Has any player ever played for, or been on the books of more clubs in the same city?" wonders Thomas Paternoster.

"Has anyone ever scored with a rabona - crossing the right leg behind the left to strike the ball - in top-flight football?" asks Keith Kent. "I know Juan Seba Veron did it in training from 40 yards out when he was on a tour of America with United but it wasn't captured on camera."

"Following Lee Carsley's accidental clash with Tim Cahill's knee, what other cases are there of players injuring a team-mate during a game?" enquires Sam Read.

"Last week, Scottish rugby union commentator John Beattie commentated on his own son Johnnie scoring a try on his international debut," notes Niel Butler. "Has anything similar ever happened in football?"